by Anne Conley
When she’d finished, he moved to roll her table away from her, his eyes cast down, yet the tension of his body told her he was aware of her at all times. He was careful to stay out of reach, which she found fascinating but didn’t question. He should stay out of her reach.
When he’d left, she stared at the four walls and plotted until lunch time, when he brought her a bread and cheese sandwich. She ate it, repeating her questions while adding in some other babble to try to bust through his silence. By supper time, the canned soup was a welcome diversion. And she had more of a plan than to just get him within reach and kill him somehow, since he clearly wasn’t going to let that happen.
Yet, he still refused to answer her. When he gathered her tray to leave after her dinner, she offered, “So I guess that’s it for today? I’ll see you tomorrow?” It was a last-ditch effort to communicate, but it appeared to work. For the first time since this morning, he looked at her, those blue eyes piercing through her. They were cold but not calculating.
A nod. She got a nod from him.
She would take it. Bonnie had no idea how long she would be here, but she was determined to make the silent, tattooed guy with horns an ally.
Chapter Sixteen
The next day was more of the same. Bonnie remembered reading somewhere that if captives could talk and make their captors relate to them on some level, they might have a better chance at survival. She couldn’t remember where she’d read it, or if she’d actually heard it, or if it were even real or something her brain had conjured for her to cling to. But she was latching on to the idea with both hands.
Since she hadn’t slept at all the night before, she’d stared at the ceiling and plotted. She’d planned out what she was going to say to the guy when he brought her food today, if he came. If Jonas came instead, she had a plan for that, too.
So when the tattooed guy came in with her eggs and toast for breakfast, Bonnie ignored the feelings of anger and hatred rising within her and forced a smile on her face.
“Good morning! I’m afraid I didn’t sleep well. You?”
No answer, just like she’d thought. She tried again with a more familiar question. “Where’s Jonas?”
His eyes flickered to hers as he set the tray on the table and rolled it toward her. If she weren’t mistaken, there was a slight upturn of his lips, as if she amused him. It was better than the stone face he’d had yesterday.
Today, she took longer to eat, as she chatted away and peppered the man with questions, none of which he answered.
“How long did it take to have your body tattooed? I’m assuming it’s all over,” she’d question. “Did the tattoos hurt worse or the horn implants? Living in Austin, I’ve seen a lot of weird stuff, and the horns aren’t unheard of. I’ve always wondered how they’re done. I suppose I can Google that when I get out of here.”
He never answered her, allowing her to prattle on. She couldn’t tell if he was ignoring her or absorbing her questions and not responding. Either way, she continued.
“You know, Jonas and I have a history. Sort of. We knew each other in college. Well, he knew me. I honestly had no idea who he was, but he stalked me and threatened me and scared the shit out of me so badly I ran back home and have been hiding ever since. It was total coincidence I ended up in his club the other night.” Bonnie kept her voice conversational, filling the silence with her seemingly random musings. But her plan seemed to be working. He actually reacted to the next part. “Whatever he did the last time, it got my brothers there and scared them to death. They whisked me away and hid me so hard I hardly knew where I was for a while.” She chuckled, and the raised eyebrow from the silent, broody guy gave her hope, making her smile a bit more genuine, even if she did want to throw up her eggs and toast for entertaining this guy.
And that was all. Without a word, he eyed her empty plate and wheeled the table out of her reach, leaving with the tray.
A sigh escaped her. It was a little progress but not much. She had no idea when Jonas would show his face and make good on his promises.
The promises she’d been successful in not thinking about since she’d been here.
Sure, he’d made all sorts of threats when he’d been stalking her, before she had a clue who he was or how scary he could be.
At first, she’d tried to ignore the creeper who kept leaving things in her car—dead flowers, pictures of her with stuff spilled on them, all the notes calling her his pretty girl—but when she found a bag with rope, duct tape, and a hunting knife, the threat was clear she needed to get the campus police involved.
And they’d called Simon, her emergency contact at the time.
He’d come down with Quinten, guns blazing, and they’d done their own investigation, which had mortified Bonnie. They’d questioned and intimidated all her friends, especially the male ones, pestered her professors, et cetera. As if threatened by them, Jonas had escalated to breaking into her house.
And it had finally scared her away.
Her brothers had quietly ushered her out of Waco and back home. They did an extension of their previous investigation and finally joined her in her new barracks, very tight-lipped about what they’d found out.
As if Jonas had scared them.
Which was exactly why Bonnie had done everything they ordered her to do. If Simon and Quinten were scared of something, she should be, too. At first, it all seemed legitimate. But then it hadn’t, since Jonas never contacted her once since she’d been home. After a year and then more, she was over living like a recluse.
But with a life came challenges and dangers, as she was now seeing. Her ankle still shackled to the bed, she leaned back with a sigh.
She had to get out of here.
When Tattooed Guy came with her cheese sandwich for lunch, she continued her idle chatter, desperate for a response. She complimented his cooking with a forced chuckle, asked him questions about himself and Jonas, and then resorted to telling the man stories of growing up with two tough guys for brothers, inserting her new boyfriend into the story where she could. Bonnie wanted him to understand these guys would find her and come after her, and if he got in the way, he was dead.
At supper, she finally got some response she could use. Tattooed Guy was wheeling away the table, less gingerly than before, when he finally said, “Jonas will be here Saturday morning.”
His voice was low, almost a whisper, but it was so foreign to her ears, it was almost loud in the room that had heard nothing but her own voice for days.
Saturday. Bonnie was speechless until he closed the door and locked it.
That was something concrete. She had no idea what to do with the information, but it at least gave her a deadline. She had until Saturday to get the hell out of here. If only she could get a message to Simon and Quinten that they only had until Saturday to free her. How many days was that?
She didn’t even know what day today was.
Chapter Seventeen
For once, the entire firm was working on a case in the front office because Miriam’s space for the reception of visitors was bigger. She had closed the office to guests until Bonnie was found, so they all worked the case, Deena Rae enthusiastically coming in from her medical leave. They all longed to exert some physical pressure on their bodies, but the inherent need to find Bonnie overrode everything. Yesterday had been spent with half the team combing Austin, visiting known properties owned by the senator and Jonas. The other half had been digging into everything else at the office. As much as he’d wanted to get in on the action, Zack was well aware of his limitations and realized his skill set would be better suited listening to his voice software read off credit card statements and shit that made him crazy.
The FBI had come in and told them to cease and desist, that they were impeding an ongoing investigation, but they’d only stopped while the men in suits were there. As soon as they’d left, the office flew into a flurry of activity again.
Right now, Jordan and Ryan were scouring the city, ready to call in for bac
kup when they found her. Evan had hacked into both the senator and Jonas’s cell phones and had Deena Rae triangulating shit on a giant map, while Miriam was listening to phone calls nobody had a clue how Evan had obtained. Quinten was currently at the DA’s office with Valerie trying to get records from the senator’s court case, looking for any assets to clandestinely search. Hollerman was at the police station, trying to glean any information he could. Simon was pacing the room, looking over everyone’s shoulder, barking orders at everyone.
Surveillance videos of the event showed two men who weren’t Jonas, but nobody was under any illusions. They were henchmen. Jonas had made the clear threat. He came from money and status, and his father had flown under the radar with nefarious activities, undoubtedly giving him a sense of sanctimoniousness.
The two faces had been projected onto the wall for everyone to study. Ryan had confirmed they were both at South by Southwest, one of them was Manicotti Man, the other was the tattooed guy who’d pulled Bonnie into the room to be held at gunpoint by Jonas.
Both of them were running through Evan’s facial recognition software, but the red guy was coming up with nothing so far. Manicotti Man was Alfonzo D’Angelo, a known associate of the senator, whom the FBI had already picked up for questioning. Of course, the senator had already denied everything, and the Feds had let him loose. To their knowledge, Jonas hadn’t been picked up yet, even though Ryan had told them everything about The Wave the other night, and the clear threat to her should have made him suspect numero uno.
But whatever. They had this.
Thirty-six hours after Bonnie had disappeared and what had they learned? Jonas and the senator were going to work as if nothing out were out of the ordinary, going home to drink their expensive brandies, and doing it all over again. No phone calls where they talked about Bonnie, no purchases for her, nothing.
Bonnie wasn’t being held in any building the senator or Jonas owned. They hadn’t found anything on traffic cameras, either. Zack had heard a quiet vehicle, which meant it was probably a luxury sedan or limo of some sort. But with the South by Southwest madness happening, the town was full of industry big-wigs who drove rental luxury sedans and limos. Vehicle records showed the senator owned a Town Car, but they hadn’t been able to pick it out in any of the traffic cameras. Bonnie’s phone was left at the scene, so they couldn’t trace that.
“Do we have anything from ATF?” Simon barked from where he’d stopped pacing at the head of the conference table, behind where Miriam was sitting with heavy-looking headphones on, listening to phone calls.
Paige, Evan’s wife, looked up from a sheaf of papers. “Um, they both have a ridiculous number of guns registered to them, the senator mostly has antique and collectibles, really expensive ones. Jonas has more handguns, a few shotguns, and a rifle. Between the two of them, they’ve got just about every caliber and manufacturer covered. I’m not sure what to look for specifically.”
“Recent ammo purchases, licensing revocations,” he sighed. “I don’t know. The needle?” Pinching the bridge of his nose, he ducked his head. “Somebody find the needle.”
The needle in the haystack. The big break. The one thing that would make all this other stuff fall into place. It usually took months, years to find the needle, and they needed it yesterday.
Zack’s phone buzzed on the table, and the tinny robotic voice spoke softly to him, telling him it was Quinten calling. He picked it up.
“Give us something good, man.”
“I’m sending you some pictures of documents. Can you scan them in with your software? There are a couple of boats I’m about to check out, plus some real estate deals he was in the middle of during the trial. There’s also evidence of a couple of fictitious business name filings that may give us a few other places to look. If he bought property using one of those, they’d be harder to find.”
“Is this Jonas or the senator?”
“It’s the senator, but the way he structured the shady side, it looks like he put a bunch of stuff in Jonas’s name.”
“Got it. Send them over.”
His phone was already pinging incoming images, and Zack used the wireless connection from his phone to print them out on the printers in the office. Ryan’s wife, Krista, started pulling them off as they printed and putting them in order.
At that moment, Mia, Jordan’s girlfriend, waltzed in, carrying cardboard containers full of coffees and bags of pastries.
“I figured you guys haven’t eaten in a while, so I brought sustenance. Anything I can help with?”
Zack’s eyes watered at the scene. Every man in the firm was helping, as they should. Besides being the sister of Simon and Quinten, Bonnie was the woman Zack was head over heels in love with. And this firm had always done what they could to protect the ones they loved. But the fact the women were getting so involved really made him ache with a wish for none of this to even be necessary.
“You and Krista can go over to the whiteboard and start making lists of assets—which ones belong to the senator, which ones belong to Jonas, and which ones they share. As Evan gets information from the …”
Simon trailed off, and Zack assumed he was looking over at Evan. “DMV, Secretary of Commerce, State Licensing Board, ICC—”
“Yeah, all those places, we’ll have more to add. But we need an organized list. You guys check and double-check all information after you copy it down. We can’t afford wild goose chases because we can’t read your handwriting.”
After a few minutes of silence, while everyone was hard at work, compiling information, Slade walked in with a bag of donuts and more coffee.
“Sorry. Class just let out. What can I help with?” Zack’s brand-new brother clapped his hand on Zack’s shoulder, a move that was more reassuring than he cared to admit. He’d had a hard time knowing his father’s infidelity was so brazen and that the “other” family had known about him the whole time. But all in all, it wasn’t shaping up to totally suck.
Slade’s shadow moved to where Deena Rae was working the giant map. He gave her a soft kiss and murmured something to her. She babbled something back that sounded a lot like “Love you, too, fucker” but Zack couldn’t be sure and didn’t want to use his ninja skills to invade privacy.
“You can double-check Deena Rae’s pins. Make sure she hasn’t made any mistakes with the coordinates.”
Slade chuckled softly, and Evan and Zack groaned under their breath. If they had said something like that about Deena Rae, she would have bitten their heads off. Simon was the only person who could insinuate Deena Rae made a mistake. Slade wasn’t a pushover, and they all wondered how they made the relationship work, but she presumably already held Slade’s balls in her pocket, or they wouldn’t be together.
Zack stood and Shania eagerly leapt to her feet. “I’m going to take Shania out. We need to stretch.” He needed out of here. While he had a specific job, it wasn’t what he wanted to be doing. Sure, the credit card shit was important to find Bonnie—if Jonas were stupid enough to use something that would help them find her—but nothing they were doing could be used in a court of law. The only way they would be able to take him down was to find her with him. Their methods would be suspect, and they’d probably all suffer legal ramifications. Of course, that shit didn’t matter at all.
He and Shania got on the elevator, and as the door closed, a hand slapped against it, followed by a grunt as it was pushed open. Zack stiffened before he realized it was Slade.
“Hey, man. I just wanted a minute with you.”
“Sure, but fair warning, this dick’s taken.” A bark of laughter met his ears. Zack was being nonchalant, but he really needed some time. He was freaking out inside his head, needing to be doing something, but he was stuck here.
It had been over a day, and chances were, Bonnie was already fucked. They’d probably taken her, killed her, and dumped her body somewhere. That’s what the odds were. That’s why business was as usual with the fuckers. He needed to find a way to w
rap his brain around that, even if it hurt more than the world to even imagine it.
“I wanted to let you know that even though things are still weird for us, I’m here for you. I appreciate what you did to help me with Deena Rae, and I’ll do whatever I can for you. Brother or not. You got it?”
Zack wished he could see the guy’s face, but his voice spoke honestly. Zack knew Slade loved Deena Rae, could tell it in the way his voice softened around her, the way he was constantly melding their shadows together when he saw them, as if he couldn’t be around her and not touch her.
It was the same way he felt about Bonnie, except he and Bonnie had something older, more comfortable, yet new and unfamiliar at the same time. He hadn’t gotten the chance to relearn her likes and dislikes, to find out if she still hated sushi and beer, to find out if she still liked cotton candy as much as she had when she was younger, or if her tastes had matured. He wondered what else he would never learn about her.
“Stop.” Slade’s voice interrupted his thoughts, and Zack’s unseeing eyes snapped back up to Slade’s face, wanting to know what he looked like.
Vague, dark shapes crunched down over Slade’s eyes.
“Dude. Your eyebrows are out of control.” The shapes in question relaxed, and Slade’s booming laughter filled the elevator as the doors opened.
They walked outside, the clicking of Shania’s claws on the tiled floor leading the way.
“How blind are you?” Slade asked the question that had probably taunted him forever.
“I see blurs, shapes, shadows, colors, and light. Zero details. Things are better when they’re muted by the sunglasses, but nothing’s ever clear to me.” And that was just visually. All sorts of metaphors and parallels could be drawn about his life from that one statement, but Zack refused to go there right now when Bonnie needed to be found.
Silence. Slade digested Zack’s words and Shania took a dump in the grass, leading Zack back to the spot to pick it up and dispose of things with the plastic baggies held in the handle of her harness.
